YOGA IMMERSIONS
The greatest purpose we can actualise in life is to AWAKEN.
The rest are boons from that state of embodiment.
Move like you. Feel like you. Fully embody you. Find out how here.
If you’re interested in deepening your yoga knowledge, expanding your tool box for life and being part of a like-minded community, this immersion programme is for you.
This is a safe and nurturing environment for exploration and self-discovery, with the highest quality of yoga education (without the hefty price tag of a teacher training).
Led by seasoned facilitators Sarah Hon, Mari Halina Colbert and Adele Kinghan, this immersion – and optional follow-on teacher training – offers a skillful blend of movement, asana (yoga poses), pranayama (breathing), meditation, Tantrik and classical philosophy, functional and embodied anatomy, somatic psychology and science – all as technologies for acquiring an integrated sense of strength, ease and connectivity in the human form. Essentially, it’s a ‘life school’ to shape-shift how you view, create and relate to yourself and the world around you.
We meet on the mat as a place to discover your own innate capacity to step into a life that is in flow, where you can thrive in every layer of your being and take that awakened mind out into the world.
Rise beyond asana,
within asana –
awakening more of you
and what’s
possible
WHAT MAKES THIS APPROACH TO STUDYING YOGA DIFFERENT AND BENEFICIAL?
This is a unique yoga study programme to expand what you’re only getting a taste of in your in-class or at-home yoga practice. It is a stand-alone course, so you can participate without having any intention of doing the teacher training component – that’s what makes this special when compared to other yoga trainings on offer in New Zealand.
Think of this like a Yoga University where you don’t have to ‘escape’ to a tropical island to completely immerse in the teachings and access the support of a like-minded group. We’ve purposely dedicated time between the two ‘retreat’ dates to give you space to integrate the material into your day-to-day life, with regular online meditation recordings sent out in this space, also, to keep the connections and inquiry going.
We feel this point deserves repeating – while this study programme offers you all the in-depth content you’d get in a high quality yoga teacher training – there are no required teaching components to this part. This means you can drop into the immersion material just for you. You can lean into it in your own pace and enjoy it without the stress of thinking ahead to how you’ll teach it. You can apply it real-time in your life.
We often hear that yoga teacher training ‘ruins’ the enjoyment of the yoga practice itself. Those who don’t want to teach, yet learn all the nuts and bolts of teaching in a teacher training find that they can’t switch off that ‘mind’ when participating in classes once it’s over. So this is our answer to that – to keep the passion for the practice alive and growing, just for you, which inevitably becomes more than you.
This programme is perfect if you’re keen to deepen your practice of yoga and your knowledge of yourself, without knowing if you want to become a teacher yet or not.
This format also provides us with the latitude to include content that is not in your run-of-the-mill yoga teacher trainings but we believe is necessary to upshift not only how you practice on the mat, but how you create your life. Unabashedly we explore free movement, somatics, developmental movement repatterning, humanistic psychology, Desire Mapping, Non-Violent Communication, deity yoga, and much more.
And for those who want to teach?
This format means you’ll have all the material firmly integrated in your own practice and life before you put pressure on yourself to share it with others.
Because the biggest challenge we see with new teachers is rushing into an intensive teacher training and teaching without their own practice firmly embedded. If your own practice falls by the wayside, so too does your teaching.
How you move is how you live. And it’s not just on your mat where it counts.
At the end of this immersion you’ll have:
- A sustainable and inspiring daily meditation practice (finally)
- Knowledge and experience of the traditions and deeper practices of yoga to help bring your most enlivened self forward in everything you do
- A love affair with your body in which you can practice all styles of yoga with play, smarts and soul
- A lived and direct experience of freedom from the unhelpful and self-limiting patterns in your life
- Life-long connections with life-affirming friends
- Courage to speak your truth in every relationship
- A greater understanding and embodiment of what deep aliveness and fulfillment really is for you
In this yoga immersion we bring to life the potential in our practices with a limited-size group of curious people who are ready to question, explore and shake things up. We create spaces where we feel that we belong and where we feel at home, fundamentally within our bodies. We inspire hope, belief and trust. Where we move and are moved, challenge and are challenged, with the perfect blend of practical knowledge and spiritual purpose.
We examine how we doubt ourselves and suffer, and alchemize it with awareness, vulnerability, acceptance, and love. We create boundaries to find a framework for freedom, and we crack our perspective wide open. We come together to laugh and deepen our joy and shed our pain. We find stillness. We find stability and clarity. We articulate and bring into being all that’s possible within, while revelling in how truly magical – and similar – we actually are.
How do we do this? What is covered over the course of the immersion?
You will learn Asana practices for an awake body
Foundational alignment for vinyasa and Embodied Flow™ asana, integrating developmental and anatomical pathways in relationship to gravity and space. Embodiment practices inspired by Body Mind Centering® – tapping into the felt sense of different developmental pathways and systems of the body: musculoskeletal, organ, endocrine, and nervous systems in order to gain awareness, registry and resonance of these systems. All of which gifts your greater wellbeing, freedom and ease.
You will learn functional and embodied anatomy
The unique alchemy of studying and embodying traditional and movement-based anatomy and physiology, biomechanics and arthrokinematics for greater flow and intuitive alignment, as well as subtle body and energy anatomy and physiology (chakras, nadis, etc) for a well-rounded approach to asana and movement practices.
You will learn about Ayurveda, nutrition and lifestyle
Learn about yoga’s sister science, Ayurveda and how it applies to lives of modern yogis for greater health and self-understanding, along with naturopathy and nutritional medicine.
Explore your highest intention of practicing yoga
Get to know what moves you – alignment, sequencing and seasonal routines, and understand how you want to feel in your practice, and on a macro level, your life. We take this into the whys and how-to’s of cultivating a home practice: methodology and practice of asana, meditation and breath work (pranayama).
You will learn ancient philosophy for modern life
In-depth study of yoga philosophies – not just the yamas and niyamas! – and traditional texts (including the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the Bhagavad Gita), the history and evolution of yoga to modern postural yoga, and Tantric metaphysics and yoga philosophy in the lineage of Kashmir Shaivism – including sutra study (Shiva Sutras and the Pratyabijna Hrdayam) and discussion, deconstruction and appliccation of these concepts for practice and modern day life.
You will learn the science of sound and Sanskrit
Sound moves and awakens energy. Sound is vibration, and vibration is essentially what life is made of, at its most purest level. Explore the nature of sound, your relationship to your voice, embodied voice and sounding practices, and learn and practice the vibrational resonance and grammatical study of one of the greatest ancient languages, Sanskrit.
You will learn pranayama
How you choose to breathe provides insight into how you choose to live. Study the anatomy of the breath, understand your breathing patterns, therapeutic approaches and practice techniques.
You will learn mantra and meditation
From our foundations in the nature of sound, learn and practice mantras and sound practices from the vedic, tantric, bhakti and nada yoga traditions. Discover the connection between sound, silence and meditation. Learn how to begin or deepen your own mantra and meditation practice to suit your needs and goals.
You will learn the science and play of prana (energy) and citta (mind)
Through understanding the nature of energy and the mind, learn how to make choices that are inspired, informed and true for your life and what you want to create. Learn to influence the energy within your body, and direct it with clear intention within your body and life. We’ll study techniques for emotional freedom, the four aspects of a ‘souls-purpose’ from the Purushartha and the concept of Svadharma (your unique purpose) alongside Danielle La Porte’s desire mapping to co-create the life of your deepest desires and more.
You will learn sub-styles of Hatha yoga
The Embodied Flow™ method is rooted in Hatha (the physical practice of yoga, derived from Tantric lineages) and as such other sub-styles of Hatha Yoga are covered including Vinyasa, Yin and Restorative.
ESSENTIALLY HOW WE DO THIS IS THROUGH EMBODIMENT.
This is the only training in NZ to have such a rich focus on embodiment.
Yoga is much more than Asana, but asana is where we start. When the self – as the totality of everything we are, physically, psychologically, culturally, socially, and environmentally – is fully embodied, inseparable from the body – we awaken. We start to realise that we have a choice in what we believe, think, say, and do. We start to realise that how we operate in the world is dictated by our choice of how we view it and how we move in response. We start to realise we can move from and into the world in different, empowering ways. We can make choices from a higher place.
Sounds like a lot huh? It is. But also so necessary if we’re to step into why we’re here, to support and serve others and exist together in a world that is safe, nourishing, compassionate and connected.
The immersion programme gifts us the time to figure oursevles out. The space and tools to transform with true knowledge of ourselves. And the support to put that knowing into action – everything we do infused by everything we are.
The physical practice of yoga – of which we deconstruct and reconstruct throughout this immersion – provides the vehicle for this exploration and understanding. When we become more open in our bodies, we open channels of awareness. When we illuminate the way our mind moves in our bodies, we access an intelligence that is more than the ‘thinking mind’. We start to understand the nature of our mind, and how it may or may not be serving our highest self. When we find a balance of strength and ease in asana, we find it in life; because how we do one thing informs how we do everything… what we do on the mat counts. It’s for this reason that the immersion element of the programme is so potent.
WHAT STYLE OF YOGA IS TAUGHT?
THE METHODOLOGY OF EMBODIED FLOW™
What is taught is not limited to ‘style’. Instead, we teach you how to find your yoga, for you. But in saying that, yes, we offer a particular method that helps uncover that. A method that is not dogmatic,, where there is nothing to buy into. We’re not trying to sell you on the one idealised, rigid way to do asana. It’s a method that doesn’t purport to have ‘the answer’ – the answer can only be found within you. So the method we call Embodied Flow™ simply becomes the cotainer for the contents of your own awakening.
Being embodied is a universal, dynamic process that blends experience, context, and time together and embeds them in human biology through a process of integration. Embodiment happens because most of the structures and functions in our bodies are malleable – they have plasticity – which means they alter naturally in response to our experiences. Knowing this gives us a greater sense of who, how, and what we are in life – we are not stuck with what we were born with, or the childhood we grew up with, or our current patterns of being. We are beings of change. Naturally. It’s also why we start with the body – we are our bodies. The body gives us insight to where we have been. What we are holding onto. Where we can move from. We are never not our bodies.
Our body is our one consistent home for ourselves from the moment we’re created to the moment we die. When we start with the body, and work with the body, we free up space for a different perspective, for creativity and transformation. By clearing what may be keeping us stuck in limitation we become more of what we are.
This is why RISE is affiliated with Embodied Flow™. This method is the foundation for how you grow into yourself – the self that is beyond your current day construct of who you are. The self that is limitless and full of agency. The self that is easeful and all knowing. The self that is true, conscious and imbued with wellbeing.
About Embodied Flow™
Embodied Flow™ is a system of transformational yoga taught by our teachers and mentors, Tara Judelle and Scott Lyons, that invites you into your deepest sense of self, and elicits the experience of stepping into flow as meditation in action.
About Tantra
Tantra is a system of practices that is designed to weave the strands of our human and spiritual nature into a unified whole. (Yes, that's right, Tantra is not defined by sexual practices, any more than your sex life defines you! It was all a scandalous misunderstanding borne by a gross misrepresentation of a few). Tantric philosophy asserts that the Divine is both of this world and beyond it - and that each of us is a expression of the whole, or in other words, a divine spiritual being having a human experience. Practicing RISE Yoga is all about awakening to this truth, and liberating yourself of whatever gets in the way of knowing and acting from this truth daily. It's a method and a philosophy that supports you to fully participate in life in a way that is meaningful for you, without all of the accompaning ways in which we suffer.
WE RECOGNISE, VALUE AND HONOUR THE POWER OF COMMUNITY
This is one of the greatest joys of a training like this – the opportunity to meet a community of like-minded people to connect and have fun with. Past students are still very much a part of the RISE family. They offer a web of connection for each other that continues to foster and inspire growth, enquiry and benevolent service to their families, communities and the world at large.
This is firmly established in the ongoing alumni gatherings and courses that we offer throughout the year, to practice with other RISE graduates and to continue to evolve with the material as our lives ebb and flow.
And PS: If you don’t think you’re good enough or advanced enough or skinny/bendy enough, or some other excuse around not having the right clothes/ time/ support, drop that now. It’s an age old trick for your ego to protect the you that you were yesterday. But you’re not that person – just like the progressive programme of nature, you’re continually evolving. To what level, and to what fulfilment – that’s up to you. If you have a body – which you do – you can do this. You’ve got this.
If you’ve been letting that river of potency run dry, for whatever reason, now is the time to change things up.
You’re enough, and really, yoga has nothing to do with being bendy. Our only prerequisite is your curiosity. The world needs practitioners and teachers like you more than ever. Rise.
And at the end of it? You will be unrecognisable – to yourself and to others.
Lead your own evolution in our 100hr Deepen Your Practice, Enliven Your Life immersion programme, then be THE revolution in our follow-on 100hour Art of Teaching programme.
FAQs
We recommend that you have practiced yoga for at least two years so that you have enough time to formulate your own experiences and to see and feel what effects yoga has. That said, it is more important that you come with an open mind and a deep sense of playful curiosity no matter how advanced your practice is. We are not concerned whether you can do a headstand, handstand or similar, but instead with your attitude and willingness to question, explore and dive deeper into the teachings – and that’s really independent from any asana.
During the immersion, there will be asana, pranayama, meditation as well as dance and free movement. So, be prepared for a lot of fun and maybe also “out of your comfort zone” activities that will stretch your capacity and enliven more of the inherent possibility that lies within you.
Choose to step up, and step into yourself.